Blogs

7:30 am: Small committee meeting to evaluate 8^th grade “technology” literacy assessment test pilot data. Yes, we understand that you can’t really adequately assess these skills in a multiple choice test. However, this is what our middle school principals want. Okay – for one year. After all, the data might be very interesting. We decided last month that information literacy skills were more important – looking at both our district and state “definitions” of technology literacy – all framed within the important skills and concepts of information literacy. We tried out our assessment on 9^th grade students to see how they’d do. The results were less than spectacular. We dissect the test – try to determine what the problem areas are – is it vocabulary? Are we really not teaching students how to evaluate information critically and competently? We decide to continue our analysis on our wiki – as we separate for conferences, teaching, and other job responsibilities. Time is running short.

10:00 am: Travel to one of our high schools to train and brainstorm with a new audio/visual paraprofessional how to use the library system to effectively search and report on her equipment inventory. Dissect the MARC record form, see what fields display in reports, the circulation module, and the PAC. Yes – we can make this work! How lucky I feel that this new staff member has the technology skills to follow me as I show her searching and reporting strategies in software she’s never really seen before.

11:30 am: Meet with the high school’s library media specialist. She’s been saving up her questions for me. Right and left brain questions. How should she introduce AASL’s new Learning Standards and gain buy-in from her teachers? How do I see these relating to the previous 9 Information Literacy Standards, and the state-adopted ISTE NETS? Big questions – no immediate answers. How can we make the online library catalog display a message to students, when they are looking at non-fiction results, a suggestion to go to our online subscription databases for further information? And lastly, have I looked at her school’s linked “citation machine” to determine if this is producing accurate and up-to-date MLA citations? I did not have an answer for any of these questions – more to explore later.

1:00 pm Back in my cubicle – scanning email for “emergencies” and checking voice mail. Is Kids Catalog down? -No. Why can I only check in items and not check out? –You haven’t loaded a patron. My principal wants me to add these books to the database. The first few worked – then I keep getting errors. Why? – I need a bit more information to answer that question. Can you load this MARC record file right away? I have a student who has been asking to check out this book for 2 days! - Ok – wow – no errors – it loaded in less than a minute! The other 50 emails will need to wait…Checking my calendar – what’s on for tomorrow? A half-day training with teachers, librarian and technology teacher at an elementary school. A chance to model collaboration, integration of information literacy, backwards design, formative assessment…need to check my notes and make sure I have enough handouts.

2:00 pm Department meeting to review our progress on creating a video to show what 21^st century learning looks like. The script is in place – but where can we find those examples of excellence to capture on film? Do we all agree what it looks like? I am not sure. Add to my list of to-dos – find out when some great collaborative projects are happening in our school libraries. Schedule the film crew.

2:45 pm: My chance to be with kids – I am scheduled to read to a preschool class today! What a delight! I feel grounded.

3:30 pm: Finally a chance to catch up with the school I’m working with tomorrow. The agenda is approved – the plan is in place. I run off the handouts I need.

4:00 pm District Accreditation Sub-committee Meeting: We have been re-writing the district plan to accredit schools. This is an important place to have my voice heard. This is hard work – deep thinking, and it is late in the day. I contribute what I can to the conversation and decision making – content in the knowledge that the administrators and teachers, as well as the parents on this committee know that I am a librarian by profession – and I have good ideas to contribute and support the ultimate mission – student success.

Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, and I will be leading a conversation about libraries at a conference this Saturday called Educon 2.0. The session, Extreme Library Makeover, will be a discussion of what Library 3.0 could look like at your school.

The session will be streamed LIVE on Ustream, at 2:30 Eastern time.

For the link to the stream, click here:

http://educon20.wikispaces.com/Agenda

In fact, all the sessions at the "unconference" will be Ustreamed!

You can watch the sessions or if you want to join the "chat" you can create a Ustream account.

Hope to see some of you there!

M A G E E's Blog is my original blog and I don't feel like it gets any hits. It certainly doesn't get many comments. So, I'm writing about it here in hopes of gaining readership which will hold me more accountable for journaling on it. You can signup to have emails when I post something new.

The latest post is about the "Learning 2.0 A Colorado Conversation" Conference. You should check out if you don't already know about it. It is going to be a great FREE conference in February in Colorado. My school district, St. Vrain Valley (SVVSD) has partnered with Littleton's and Arapahoe High School to put on this event.

Check out M A G E E's Blog and read about this worthwhile event!

P.S. Magee is my maiden name and my husband's nickname for me.

Wed, Jan 02, 2008
Laptop project enlivens Peruvian hamlet
For early recipients of the One Laptop Per Child foundation's XO computers, life is profoundly different
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

"The children of Arahuay prove OLPC’s transformative conceit: that you can revolutionize education and democratize the internet by giving a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the worlds’ poorest kids."

Today I got to touch one of these fantastic little XO's! A colleaque was given one by Santa! As part of the 2007 SVVSD District Technology Fair, we will be giving away one in a drawing for all students attending the awards. The winner will receive not only the XO laptop but also mentoring services from one of the Instructional Technology staff on using the XO. I wonder who will be mentoring who?

Will journal the project on this blog after the fair on February 2, 2008.

Hi All,

Check the wonderfull site of "E-Books for Childrens" in various languages.

Regards

Naveed

Link: http://www.childrenslibrary.org/

Richard,

Thank you for your post. I am checking them out now. Vivian

I don't remember how I came upon this site: Answer Board Librarians at WetPaint.com, but I signed up much like I do for others sites like this and then "sat on it" for a while. Takes me some time to get the feel for a site and decide to participate even if I am a member.

This site seems to be mostly participated in by public library staff, but why not have a school library contingent? Check it out and let me know what you think.

Have you seen this? Have you been there? What do you think? Who sends in these questions anyway? I know, the world. I've been a member for a while now, but am just starting to delve into this site and it's usefulness to me and me to it. I am not an answer board librarian. Should I be?

What is it? This is an idea-sharing wiki for librarians who post to answer boards, like Answers.com's WikiAnswers (http:wiki.answers.com), Yahoo Answers or Amazon's Askville. It is kind of like AskColorado only not just library type questions. It seems much, much larger and free. The answer board librarians recognize that this wiki and being an answer board librarian can help promote the idea that librarians are active and dynamic participants in the web 2.0 community, and they're not just waiting for the questions to come in! For that reason alone, we should participate. . .

Go to: Slam the Boards and look for the August original post to find out more about this little opportunity. Where do these folks find the time to do this? Do you do this? Where could we find the time? Even Ask Colorado evening shifts are run by folks all over the world that are hired by a subcontractor.

One thing I recently found out about AskColorado - they have no school librarians answering the online questions currently but most of the calls are from middle school age students. Thank you public librarians for helping our kids.

Sadly I think that school librarians are so overworked, their ability to participate in this larger global culture is extremely limited. What can we do?